Through WhatsApp messages to teachers and emails to students, sent late in the afternoon, the EFTI film and photography school announced on Friday, May 31, its total closure, citing economic reasons. The decision affects more than 200 people, including the teaching team, students, models and school employees. The staff and collaborators are left without a job while the students are left without the title for this course and, in some cases, without the master’s degree for the next course for which they had paid up to 30,000 euros in advance.
“We taught class on Friday morning with complete normality. In the afternoon there were also classes and around 9:30 p.m. we received a statement by email, in the case of the teachers it was by WhatsApp, in which they told us that the school was closing at that very moment and that it was going into bankruptcy. “, explains to El Salto Sonia Galindo, one of the students who was in the advanced photography course, after having taken the professional course since September. She was going to continue with the author’s master’s degree. “I haven’t paid, luckily, for a matter of days, and it was 8,900 euros that I would have had to pay,” she says.
Despite the surprise at the manner, the school had been smelling burnt for some time, since the succession of non-payments to staff and teachers, and the postponement or cancellation of many classes had multiplied during the last year. Some teachers accumulated up to five unpaid salaries. The models for the photography sessions also had several sessions pending payment.
The situation is particularly complicated for foreign students, many from countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Argentina or the United States, who depend on visas and residence permits. “A large part of the students, of this course and the next, have not even received the email with the closing statement, and have found out from the press, or through the teaching staff, despite the fact that, in recent times, Those who were in arrears with their payments had been legally threatened, and there were also ongoing procedures for residence permits and work practices that were also agreed upon, and for which some people had rescinded their previous commitments,” denounce students and professors. in a joint statement released on Monday, June 3.
Facade of the EFTI photography school. Photo: Sonia Galindo
The confirmation of the bad symptoms came after the communication, by the management of the company, founded in 1987, that it was going to carry out a restructuring, approved by the Commercial Court number 11 of Madrid on May 21. Ten days later came the WhatsApp messages and emails and the lowering of the school blinds.
At noon on Monday, EFTI sent a new statement to the students, after a large group of them gathered at the doors of the center. “They tell us to be calm, not to worry, that they are going to try to relocate us to another school, that we will be able to do practices. Something absurd and unacceptable,” laments Galindo. It will be the judge of the bankruptcy process who finally decides what happens with the degrees.
